None at all? Try looking up past papers and trying some out maybe- personal writing is worth 70 marks of one paper, and if you have stuff thought out already, it's easy marks.
Good luck!

I agree with your point that he should look up past papers and try some of the questions. However personal writing for the vast majority of students is not easy marks.

The only way to improve your personal writing is by reading (lots and lots of reading) and writing.

DO NOT LEARN OFF ESSAYS/STORIES ETC. FOR PERSONAL WRITING. The chance of an essay you have learnt matching perfectly to the essay title asked in the exam in little to none. It is a waste of time.
I would recommend you to try doing random exam questions (that you have never seen before) in the amount of time the exam allows (approximately one hour). If you do this regularly over the next 3 months you will see a drastic improvement in your personal writing skills.

I agree with your point that he should look up past papers and try some of the questions. However personal writing for the vast majority of students is not easy marks.

The only way to improve your personal writing is by reading (lots and lots of reading) and writing.

DO NOT LEARN OFF ESSAYS/STORIES ETC. FOR PERSONAL WRITING. The chance of an essay you have learnt matching perfectly to the essay title asked in the exam in little to none. It is a waste of time.
I would recommend you to try doing random exam questions (that you have never seen before) in the amount of time the exam allows (approximately one hour). If you do this regularly over the next 3 months you will see a drastic improvement in your personal writing skills.

Hope the above helps.

I should be fine then. I'm a total bookworm and proud. Even when the people in class laugh at me because I read a lot - I laugh at them. They're the ones who will face the consequences of not embracing the world of literature.
<3
Sound like a total nerd. :L

I remember in first year on my xmas exams, a question about surprises or something came up and I used a story I wrote in 6th class Got a really good mark too.

yeah exactly, I know a few interesting characters & 3 completely different plots, so if I wanted to do the story question, i wouldnt have a problem

Below are all the REALLY open ended questions from the past few exam papers

2011Write a story beginning, “I knew I would need a lot of courage to get through
the day …”2010
Write a story which includes the words, ‘I wish I had listened’.2009
Write a composition including the line, “That really was the last straw”.2008Write a composition including the line, "It was the unfairness of it all that annoyed me most."

as you can see, it would be possible to use the same story for all of them

For example, just picking a random story out of my head, it would be possible to write about "a bad day" for all of them

I'm not sure what the best stories to learn off are, but go through past exams and see what you think

Last edited by The One Who Knocks; 13-02-2012 at 16:31.
Reason: grammar

I couldn't disagree with you more to be honest. Obviously you are not going to guess the exact title but there's always an opened ending question in the JC that you can twist to suit you.

Make up a few interesting characters and learn them off, then learn 3 different plots and you'll be able to write about anything (if you twist it to suit you)

However for the personal writing section, I find it's much easier to stick to the speech question. (write a speech for/against a motion)
Learn the general structure, key phrases to use etc.

The added bonus of doing the speech is that it's generally acceptable to write less than a usual short story, so 2 & a half pages would be considered plenty.

I would do the story question, but I find my essays are either hit or miss, amazing or brutal, so I don't want to risk it in june.

Whatever you do, make sure you learn interesting characters off by heart, as they can be used in any story you write

Fair points, however if the story/essay/speech etc. is not consistent throughout you will be heavily penalised. So if you go to the bother of learning off a brilliant story with amazing vocab, grammar etc. and then you have to "twist" the story around the fit the title, the examiner will know.

I agree with your points on the speech, excellent option to choose. I personally would recommend choosing the essay over the short story however, that is of course unless you can compose an excellent, (and well developed!) story in less than three pages. This is extremely difficult to do, much harder than writing a full book where you have plenty of time to develop and show different sides of your character throughout.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue any more , best of look with everything, have you done your pre's yet?

2011Write a story beginning, “I knew I would need a lot of courage to get through
the day …”

I did that essay :')...and made it up on the spot.

I'm strongly opposed to the idea of learning off essays. Learned-off essays can be spotted a mile away unless you get very, very lucky with the title they give you. That said, I had to do quite a few essays for homework and the like and if one of them could have slotted into the question, it would've been fairly handy. However, none did, nor did I expect any to. It's no harm to hope, but don't resign yourselves to writing an essay you've learned off. At the start of the exam, look at your options, then go off and do the rest of the paper and hopefully some ideas will have formed in your mind by the time you come back.

At the very least, don't learn off an essay word for word. If you get into that mindset, it's hard to manipulate it to actually fit the question. Have the gist of the story, but be open to the idea of adding new bits and taking stuff out to make it work with the question asked, this will also make it look a lot more fresh. If you can write a coherent post on boards, you can write a decent essay. They're not asking you to write a story worthy of being published, just answer the question with relevance, use good grammar and punctuation and throw in some nice words/adjectives (someone should start a word thread, big fancy words are awesome!) for good measure.

I'm strongly opposed to the idea of learning off essays. Learned-off essays can be spotted a mile away unless you get very, very lucky with the title they give you. That said, I had to do quite a few essays for homework and the like and if one of them could have slotted into the question, it would've been fairly handy. However, none did, nor did I expect any to. It's no harm to hope, but don't resign yourselves to writing an essay you've learned off. At the start of the exam, look at your options, then go off and do the rest of the paper and hopefully some ideas will have formed in your mind by the time you come back.

At the very least, don't learn off an essay word for word. If you get into that mindset, it's hard to manipulate it to actually fit the question. Have the gist of the story, but be open to the idea of adding new bits and taking stuff out to make it work with the question asked, this will also make it look a lot more fresh. If you can write a coherent post on boards, you can write a decent essay. They're not asking you to write a story worthy of being published, just answer the question with relevance, use good grammar and punctuation and throw in some nice words/adjectives (someone should start a word thread, big fancy words are awesome!) for good measure.

I'm strongly opposed to the idea of learning off essays. Learned-off essays can be spotted a mile away unless you get very, very lucky with the title they give you. That said, I had to do quite a few essays for homework and the like and if one of them could have slotted into the question, it would've been fairly handy. However, none did, nor did I expect any to. It's no harm to hope, but don't resign yourselves to writing an essay you've learned off. At the start of the exam, look at your options, then go off and do the rest of the paper and hopefully some ideas will have formed in your mind by the time you come back.

At the very least, don't learn off an essay word for word. If you get into that mindset, it's hard to manipulate it to actually fit the question. Have the gist of the story, but be open to the idea of adding new bits and taking stuff out to make it work with the question asked, this will also make it look a lot more fresh. If you can write a coherent post on boards, you can write a decent essay. They're not asking you to write a story worthy of being published, just answer the question with relevance, use good grammar and punctuation and throw in some nice words/adjectives (someone should start a word thread, big fancy words are awesome!) for good measure.

Also, best advice anyone can ever give you regarding English: Read.

Oh yeah, I completely agree,

When I say learn off 3 plots, I'm talking about learning the general gist of them, learning a whole essay word for word is pointless.

Once you have a beginning middle & end planned, you can then twist them to suit,

If you learn a whole essay word for word & then try to twist it, it'll only sound forced.

For example:

Write a story beginning, “I knew I would need a lot of courage to get through
the day …”

If I wanted to learn off a "Bad day" essay, I would plan it like this

Characters:

Me
Best Friend
Horrible teacher
Out-of-reach love interest

Setting:

School's always a good option

Beginning: Background to school life etc
Middle/Event: test/epic-fail etc
End: wrap it up

---------------------------------------------------------

The above plot will generally work for everything
2011Write a story beginning, “I knew I would need a lot of courage to get through
the day …”2010
Write a story which includes the words, ‘I wish I had listened’.2009
Write a composition including the line, “That really was the last straw”.2008Write a composition including the line, "It was the unfairness of it all that annoyed me most."

So all I'm saying is make sure you know the general gist of your story as well as key characters

hi i just thought there really isn't a place where students can put up patterns or predictions for the junior cert .. if you have any post them up for other people to see. Such as what people reckon will come up in people in history .. or woodwork .... ect